All kinds of meats can • be potted, and one general principle holds good for all. Remove the meat from the bones of some cooked hare, pheasant, snipe, ptarmigan, chicken or fowl, goose, turkey, grouse, or any kind of bird, and stew the bones in a little stock No. 3 (see No. 10) till the stock becomes almost a glaze. Next, pound the flesh in a mortar, with half its quantity of cooked ham, and send this through a sausage-machine, or rub it all through a wire sieve - this latter being the best. Season this with nutmeg and cayenne pepper and salt. A little powdered bay-leaf may be added. The quantity of cayenne pepper and powdered nutmeg varies very much according to taste. If the potted meat is wanted to be kept a long time, a small tea-spoonful of each may be added to every pound of potted meat, but add rather less cayenne than nutmeg. Next, moisten the mixture with a little of the half-glaze made from the bones, and add some clarified fresh butter, melted in sufficient quantity to make the whole moist. (All kinds of potted meat require a great deal of butter.) Press it down in jars, pour a little clarified butter over the top, and let it get thoroughly hot in the oven; or, still better, expose it to the action of hot steam. Then take out the jars, and let the potted meat get cold.

Too much spice and pepper spoil the flavour of the meat. When, therefore, the potted meat is required for almost immediate use, add these sparingly. Red tongue can be mixed with fowl instead of ham, in which case a larger amount of butter must be used.

Ham can be potted by mixing one pound of lean ham with a quarter of a pound of fat ham. Butter will do instead of fat, but must in any case be added afterwards. If glaze of very strong stock is used to moisten this, it must form a very hard jelly when it is cold. A ham bone chopped up will make sufficient glaze if simmered a long time.

Lobster is best potted as follows: - Cut up all the meat of a lobster, coral and all, and put it in a stewpan with about one-third of the same quantity of clarified butter, and to every pound of flesh add four anchovies, filleted. (See Anchovy, To Fillet.) Let the saucepan be over the fire for about twenty minutes. Then pound the whole in a mortar with some powdered nutmeg, white pepper and cayenne. The quantity must vary according to the time the potted lobster is required to keep. Half a tea-spoonful of each to a pound of flesh, more or less, as the case may be, will, as a rule, be sufficient. Then rub the whole through a wire sieve, press down in jars, make hot, and cover with clarified butter as before.

Shrimps and prawns are potted by pounding the heads and tails with some anchovies (four anchovies to a pound of meat) in a mortar with a little butter. Then rub all you can through a wire sieve, and add the picked shrimps or prawns whole, and some clarified butter. Season with nutmeg and cayenne as before, press down in jars, cover with clarified butter, and keep in a cool place.

Bloaters can be potted by scalding half a dozen bloaters, skinning and boning them, and mixing the flesh with about eight ounces of clarified butter, and seasoning with nutmeg or cayenne. Make hot over the fire, pound all in a mortar, rub through a wire sieve, press down in jars, and cover with clarified butter.

Smoked haddock, kippered salmon, and smoked salmon can be potted in a similar manner.

It is of the utmost importance, in all the above directions, to have the butter perfectly pure - i.e., it must be butter, and not fat. In the present day of the almost universal adulteration practised by buttermen, this constitutes a difficulty.

N.B. - When whole anchovies are recommended to be pounded, if these are not easily obtainable, a proportionate quantity of anchovy sauce can be added instead.